More unmentionables

Ok, there is something that has been on my mind for a while, and we will discuss it here. Again, those of you who are of delicate constitution may want to skip this paragraph. We will call it "Peeing in the Park." This occurs when children, usually little boys, decide to use the neighborhood park as their personal toilet. I'm not talking about once in a desperate while. I'm talking ALL THE TIME. This week, I was at the park on two separate days, and I saw no fewer than 4 children going to the bathroom on the grass, sand, pebbles, what have you. They don't even bother going to a corner or hiding at all. Nope, just right there, out in the open. I was starting to feel bad for invading their personal space. Now, I do understand those moments when your kid just has to go and there's no bathroom around for miles, and what are you going to do? But you can alleviate most of those incidents by heeding to the old adage, "Go before you leave." These families seem to do the opposite:
"Once upon a time, there was a family. They were sitting in their apartment, playing Monopoly. Suddenly, little Katzav said, 'I need to go!'
'Quick!" said his mother, gathering the sweatshirts, "Hold it in until we can get to the park!"

Anyway, moving on to things not toilet-related, since I know that we have spent a lot of time on that the past few days...First of all, I would like to respond to Sbad's comment and note that I will go out with you any time for some Fefsi. I think it would be pun! Ha ha.

So there are new people in Dimri. We got an email about it a few days ago. When I first saw the email, I thought, "Well, good luck to them. Dimri sure isn't the place to be if you want a warm, caring, community kind of feel." Then, a thought began to bubble up inside of me. Maybe, just maybe, I could be the warm, caring, community-minded sort of person! Could I do it? Could I be that friendly person? As it turns out, the answer is, "Yes." Today, I called them up, and since they only arrived two weeks ago they were all home in the middle of the day. Ariella and I stopped by on our way to her chug. We brought cookies and cupcakes. Alright, not as useful as a chicken dinner, but it was something. I felt bad I didn't know they were here earlier because they only got their stove and oven today and so did not have a working kitchen for two weeks. Anyway, we schmoozed for a while. They have a 3 year old son and a 10 month old daughter. Their son was ecstatic to talk to someone who spoke English. All in all they seemed like nice, fun, normal people who we might try to be friends with. See, fellow residents? It's not so hard to be friendly!

Today Ariella drew a picture. In the picture was a little boy, like Yaakov, who was two and a half. He had hair. There was also a girl, five years old, like Ariella. She had a ponytail sticking up. And there was a taller person representing Mommy. See the problem? Daddy, who happened to come home "early" tonight (and when I say "early" I mean just in time to rile them up before bed so they're crazy and crying when it's bedtime) saw the picture. "Where's Daddy?" he asked in surprise. "Daddy's not in the picture because Daddy's at work," Ariella answered. Absolutely textbook. Well, it'll be something for the psychiatrist's couch in twenty-some years.